Caesar the War Dog

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  ‘Okay, Aussies,’ the colonel finished up. ‘Make me proud of Operation Comanche. Go kick some Taliban butt!’

  Ben immediately went to prepare his and Caesar’s gear and, shortly after sundown, they were on a Chinook that flew them north to FOB Python along with Charlie and the other SAS men assigned to the mission. When they landed at the base, which sat on a rise on the valley floor, they were greeted by American Green Berets, members of an elite Special Forces unit, who would be their partners for the next week. These bearded, heavily tattooed Green Berets looked more like pirates than soldiers. They showed the Australians to their quarters – an old shipping container. In these cramped quarters, Caesar would sleep on his own mattress beside Ben.

  That night, the Americans gave the Australians a hot meal, followed by chocolate-chip ice-cream, of which they seemed to have an endless supply. Their cook even had a steak to spare, for Caesar, and a bone. Downing a soft drink and chatting with the friendly Yanks as Caesar lay at his feet gnawing at the bone, Ben found the Americans had been feeling isolated at this distant outpost and were pleased to have Aussie company. He also discovered that there was a US Army EDD at the base – a Belgian shepherd named Butch. His handler was Sergeant Mannie Madrid from Arizona. Mannie and Butch came and introduced themselves, and Ben and Caesar hit it off with them right away. Caesar was pleased to have some doggy company, and Ben watched with a smile as the two dogs romped like schoolboys.

  After Mannie and Butch turned in for the night, Ben and Caesar were briefly joined by Charlie for a chat. Charlie had been talking with the commander of the US Special Forces team on base, learning more about their planned week-long mission.

  ‘All set for tomorrow?’ Ben asked.

  ‘All set,’ Charlie returned, as he fondled Caesar’s ears. Caesar, for his part, rested his head on Charlie’s knee and lapped up the attention. ‘Are you in touch with Josh and Maddie back home?’ Charlie asked.

  Ben nodded. ‘We Skype every week like clockwork. I told them you were doing ops with Caesar and me. They were really pleased.’

  Charlie took a swig of his drink, then asked, ‘How are the kids handling your being away?’

  ‘Pretty well. I mean, I know they’d rather have me at home than away. And I do miss them … but I’ve got a job to do.’ He let out a long sigh.

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever end up having kids of my own, but if I do, I wouldn’t mind a couple just like Josh and Maddie. Those two are the best, mate. You are a great dad to them.’

  ‘As a special treat,’ said Ben, ‘I thought I might take them to Disneyland in California when this tour ends and Caesar and I get back home.’

  ‘To Disneyland?’ Charlie smiled. ‘Mate! Wow! Would you take Nan Fulton too?’

  ‘Absolutely. Nan goes wherever we go. A pity we can’t take Caesar with us.’

  ‘Now that, mate, I would like to see!’

  Not long after, they went to bed. The men and Caesar had to be up at dawn.

  For six days, as August gave way to September, the Australians, Americans and Afghan soldiers based at FOB Python moved methodically from one end of the valley to the other, carrying out sweeps in search of the Taliban. They found deserted Taliban hill camps, and kal occupants who, when questioned, told them that the Taliban were active in the area. That was made obvious when both Caesar and Butch discovered IEDs in and around the roads they travelled. But the Taliban themselves seemed to be deliberately keeping out of their way.

  ‘It’s a worry,’ Charlie said to Ben on their sixth night at FOB Python. ‘The Taliban are usually spoiling for a fight. I wonder what they’re up to.’

  ‘Maybe they’re waiting for us to leave the valley,’ Ben suggested.

  ‘Maybe.’ But Charlie was unconvinced, and he went to bed with a feeling of foreboding about the next day.

  The following morning, the captain in charge of the Afghan troops at FOB Python was told by a local that Commander Baradar himself was using a particular kal about five kilometres from the base. The combined Special Forces group had checked that kal earlier in the week, but the informant said that Baradar had since slipped back into it. As the Australians were supposed to be airlifted back to Tarin Kowt that evening, Charlie radioed headquarters for permission to stay on for one more day to take part in a raid on the compound in question. With the hope of securing Commander Baradar, Charlie’s superiors gave their approval, and the Australians prepared to join their comrades at FOB Python in a raid on the kal that very night.

  At twelve-thirty that night, thirty-six men – twelve Australians, twelve Americans and twelve Afghans – and two dogs set off to raid the kal and, hopefully, bag Commander Baradar. They travelled in five Humvees, the standard American four-wheel drive military vehicle. Ben and Caesar were in a Humvee along with Charlie, several other Australians including Bendigo Baz and Lucky Mertz, plus a smiley, round-faced Afghan Army interpreter named Kareem and an American driver and gunner.

  In bright moonlight the little convoy trundled away from the base, making its way north. Half a kilometre out from the target kal, the vehicles stopped and the Australians, most of the Americans and some of the Afghan soldiers clambered out. Ten men remained with the vehicles. The American sergeant in charge of the raid, Sergeant ‘Duke’ Hazard, sent one of his men out in front to lead the way, then stood watching the other men pass him in single file as they trooped after the pathfinder. When Charlie drew abreast of him, the bearded Hazard, who wore a black baseball cap and chewed gum perpetually, fell in beside him and walked part of the way at his side.

  ‘My guys and the ANA will take the northern gate,’ said Hazard. ‘I want you and your Diggers to take the southern gate.’

  Charlie nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Gotcha.’

  ‘I’m feeling good about this op,’ said Hazard.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Charlie returned. He felt just the opposite. After going to bed the previous night with a bad feeling about the day ahead, he was still uneasy. To him, something about this mission didn’t feel right – something he couldn’t quite define – and he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. With nothing concrete to support his unease, Charlie had to simply get on with the job.

  ‘This your first tour of Afghanistan?’

  ‘No,’ answered Charlie, concentrating on the way ahead.

  ‘Don’t talk much, do you, Aussie?’ said Hazard.

  ‘Only when I have to,’ Charlie responded.

  Hazard shut up after that and rejoined his men.

  Not far behind Charlie, Ben and Caesar were in the middle of the little force of twenty-six men making their way on foot and in single file toward the target kal. The American dog Butch and his handler were toward the rear. On a two-metre leash held in Ben’s left hand, Caesar trotted by Ben’s side, alert and ready for work. With Ben and other familiar Australian soldiers all around him, Caesar was feeling part of the team.

  The mud walls of the target kal loomed up ahead, looking spooky in the green light of Ben’s night-vision goggles. This kal was much the same as countless others that Ben and Caesar had visited in Uruzgan. Roughly square, it had high mud walls around the perimeter, and contained the usual collection of small buildings and dirt courtyards. Back at FOB Python, Ben had seen an aerial photograph of it taken from a drone, so knew its layout.

  As Hazard had instructed, the assault team split into two sections, with the Australians moving to one closed gate, and the Americans and Afghans to another. Using plastic explosive, both gates were blown open at the same time. The troops swept in through the gateways, weapons at the ready. The Australians, with Ben and Caesar to the fore, checked half of the compound. The Americans, with Mannie and Butch leading the way, checked the other half. The kal was deserted. Not a single soul was found. Nor was there any sign of weapons, ammunition or explosives. In the building that clearly served as the main living quarters, Charlie, Lucky, Ben and Caesar linked up with Duke Hazard and several of his men. Oil lamps had been lit by the Americans, and they shone
a golden glow around the humbly furnished room. There weren’t even chairs for sitting. Like most traditional Afghan homes, there were simply cushions on a rug on the floor, where everyone sat to dine and talk.

  In the improved light provided by the lamps, Ben slid his night-vision goggles up onto his forehead. After instructing Caesar to sit, Ben turned to his companions. ‘So, where’s Commander Baradar?’

  ‘It was all a freaking wild goose chase!’ declared an angry Sergeant Hazard. ‘The intel was bogus!’

  ‘Either that,’ said Charlie, ‘or Baradar got wind of us and skipped out of here before we arrived.’

  ‘Or, we’ve been lured into a trap,’ said Ben, offering a third, more worrying alternative.

  The others nodded. Most agreed that Ben’s suggestion was most likely the case. But Sergeant Hazard didn’t agree. ‘If it was a trap, this place would have been booby-trapped to hell,’ he said. ‘The informant lied for money. The locals do it all the time.’ He shouldered his rifle. ‘Okay, you guys, move out. I want to be back at Python before sun-up.’

  The others began to withdraw from the room. But Ben still suspected a trap. Why, he wondered, was the kal deserted? It was full of personal belongings. People lived here. But where were they? Had the Taliban told the occupants to clear out before the foreign Special Forces troops arrived? As Ben stood there thinking these thoughts, the Americans began dousing the oil lamps. Looking down, Ben noticed that Caesar had come to his feet and was looking at the white wall at the far end of the room. It wasn’t Caesar’s usual detection signature, but it seemed that something had attracted the dog’s attention.

  Sergeant Hazard was about to extinguish the last lamp, but Ben called to him. ‘Can you leave that lamp burning for a minute longer, Sergeant?’

  ‘Why?’ Hazard irritably responded.

  ‘I think my dog’s on to something,’ Ben replied. Squatting beside Caesar, Ben unfastened his leash. ‘Caesar, seek on!’

  As Ben and Sergeant Hazard watched, Caesar moved forward and stood just centimetres from the wall at the end of the room, staring at it. Joining his dog, Ben said, ‘What have you found, Caesar, mate?’

  Caesar looked up at him for a moment, then returned his attention to the wall. He stared at it unwaveringly.

  ‘Explosives?’ Sergeant Hazard wondered aloud.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Ben responded. Removing a glove, he ran one hand over the wall’s bumpy surface. Then he took a black torch from his belt and shone it on the wall. ‘The wall’s colour is slightly different here,’ he said, ‘as if it’s been patched.’ Slipping his knife from its sheath on his belt, he stabbed the wall. Mud crumbled away as he dug a hole five or six centimetres deep. Bending down so it was eye-level, he shone his torch into the hole.

  ‘See anything?’ asked Hazard, who had brought the lamp closer. Intrigued, he was now paying close attention.

  Behind them, Charlie and several other soldiers had returned. ‘Has super-sniffer hit the jackpot again?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Looks like he might have done,’ said Ben, peering into the hole. Carefully reaching in, he took hold of an object and withdrew it.

  ‘Is that a mobile phone?’ said Charlie.

  ‘Yep,’ Ben replied, handing a grubby phone to Hazard before reaching back into the hole and bringing out seven more. Finally, he retrieved a clear plastic packet containing detonators. It had been the detonators’ faint aroma, even though they were hidden behind a mud wall centimetres thick, that had attracted Caesar’s attention.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Sergeant Hazard. ‘Could be this place has been used by the Taliban after all.’

  ‘And if there are detonators,’ said Ben, ‘chances are they’ve been making IEDs here.’

  ‘And the mobile phones?’ said Hazard. ‘You think the Taliban have been using them to communicate with each other?’

  ‘To communicate with their contacts and spies in the towns, I reckon,’ said Ben.

  ‘The bears would love to get their hands on those phones,’ said Charlie. ‘Bears’ was military slang for the military intelligence personnel, who had the equipment that would enable them to work out the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls on the phones. Once they had those numbers, the intelligence officers would be able to track down their owners, the Taliban contacts and spies.

  Ben squatted and gave Caesar a hearty pat. ‘Good boy, Caesar! Good boy! You’ve done it again, mate.’ Caesar’s tail wagged away, showing his pleasure at Ben’s obvious approval.

  ‘You got yourself one hell of a smart dog there, Digger,’ said Hazard to Ben.

  ‘Don’t let Caesar hear you say that, he’ll get a big head,’ Charlie joked.

  ‘You know what?’ said Ben, as he put the phones and detonators in a small canvas bag that he’d taken from his backpack. ‘I think the Taliban have probably planted their IEDs on the road back to FOB Python. They lured us out here on a wild goose chase, and plan to attack us on our way back to base when our guard is down.’

  ‘Then … kaboom!’ said Charlie, raising his eyebrows. ‘Ambush.’

  ‘I’m not a gambling man,’ said Ben, ‘but I’d bet a hundred bucks they’re out there now, waiting to ambush us on the road back.’

  Sergeant Hazard was rubbing his bearded chin. ‘Trust those tricky Taliban to think up something as devious as that,’ he growled. ‘Okay, we keep off the roads going back. We’ll go overland.’

  ‘What if they’ve thought of that, too?’ said Charlie.

  ‘Yeah, what if they’ve mined the countryside?’ Ben added.

  ‘They can’t mine every square inch of this valley!’ Sergeant Hazard countered. ‘We’ll have to take our chances.’

  The raiding party quickly withdrew from the compound and returned to the waiting Humvees. On Sergeant Hazard’s orders, once all the troops and dogs were aboard, the five vehicles pulled off the road. Bumping over rough, open and often rocky terrain, they began to slowly head back toward the safety of FOB Python on the hill five kilometres away.

  In the back of Ben and Caesar’s shuddering Humvee, Kareem the interpreter had headphones on. He was listening to the Humvee’s military radio, slowly scanning the radio frequencies that the Taliban were known to use. Suddenly, Kareem stiffened and listened intently. Turning to Charlie with a worried look on his face, he said, ‘Sergeant Charlie, I can hear them – I can hear the Taliban. They are talking in plain Pashto.’

  ‘What are they saying, Kareem?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘I can hear a Taliban commander,’ Kareem replied. ‘He is saying, “The infidels are coming! The infidels are coming! Be ready! Be ready!”’

  Ben knew that ‘infidels’ was what the Taliban called those who did not observe their Muslim faith. ‘The question is,’ he said, ‘are they talking about us, or about some other luckless infidels a valley or two away?’

  ‘We’ll soon find out,’ said Charlie. ‘We could have an interesting night ahead of us, boys. Lock and load.’

  Charlie slipped the carbine from his shoulder, checking it and the ammunition magazines on his belt. As all the men in the vehicle followed his lead, preparing their weapons and equipment for action, and sliding their night-vision goggles down over their eyes, Charlie used the vehicle’s radio to warn Hazard, who was riding in the Humvee behind them, telling him what Kareem had heard. Hazard replied that his interpreter had picked up similar radio chatter from the Taliban. ‘Could be they’re just trying to scare us, knowing we’re listening,’ Hazard said. ‘Could be there’s no ambush.’

  From experience, Charlie knew that an increase in Taliban radio chatter always preceded an ambush. ‘And could be my old man is Santa Claus,’ he replied, unable to hide his sarcasm. He was now convinced that an ambush was imminent.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Hazard came back over the air, sounding exasperated. ‘We’ll divert along the creek bed ahead. Should make better time using that, and we can get the hell outta here. Meantime, tell your people to keep their eyes peeled for the bad guys.’<
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  Caesar was sitting between Ben’s legs as usual, looking up at him with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. If there was a battle ahead, Ben needed both his hands free to use his weapons. But he didn’t want to be separated from Caesar, so he fastened the end of Caesar’s leash to a clip that was on his belt for just this purpose. With the pair of them connected by the two-metre length of leather, and with both hands now free, he slipped his rifle from his shoulder and prepared for action.

  Leaning down to Caesar, Ben spoke into his nearest ear. ‘Stay close, Caesar. Whatever happens, we’ll get through this together.’

  Caesar licked him on the cheek.

  Ben grinned and ruffled Caesar’s neck. ‘Yes, I love you too.’

  Charlie was looking at him. ‘If things get hairy, Ben,’ he said, ‘you worry about keeping Caesar safe. It’s not as if he can defend himself against the Taliban. And he’s a valuable asset. Let the rest of us do the shooting.’

  ‘I might not have much choice in the matter, Charlie. We might need every gun we have.’ Ben knew that the Taliban usually only staged ambushes when they outnumbered the opposition. And if they were waiting for this little convoy out there in the night, as he had predicted, then they had planned this ambush with care. The Taliban commander would have called in as many men and as much weaponry as he could. Soon, Ben suspected, he and every one of his comrades could be depending on each other to get out of this mess alive.

  Just as Ben could feel his own muscles tense and his heart pounding in his chest, he felt Caesar, sitting between his knees, also tense up. More than just picking up Ben’s increased alertness, Caesar, like Ben, could sense danger – and that danger was real and growing closer by the second.